With the continuous progress and development of society, people have become increasingly demanding on the quality of their life, and increasing attention has also been made to their diets. However, the pace of life has become increasingly fast. Coming home fatigue and exhausted after a hard day's work, people are increasingly unwilling to prepare meals and hope to free themselves from heavy housework so that they may pursue more leisure activities.
In the traditional cooking process, the cook does all things, from selecting and matching of cooking ingredients, inputting the ingredient into the pot, cooking the food, removing the food from the pot, to arranging the dish. Cooking skills vary from person to person, and thus the skill of the cook determines the look and taste of the dish. More importantly, the cooking process is not only labor intensive, but the long hours working among the heat and fume in the kitchen also leads to various kitchen diseases. Therefore, human cooking labor is being gradually replaced by the machines in doing some cooking work. Robots have also appeared to perform some tedious cooking tasks in the kitchen. Since the cooking process of the robots is based on expert systems, the dish is ensured to be well balanced in their nutrition. Since the cooking time and the duration and degree of heating are predetermined, more desirable look and taste of the dish is guaranteed. The result is that, even at home, people can now be served with dishes of top quality. In addition, freeing people from kitchen diseases is also a blessing to their health.
Presently, among the prior art technical information related to cooking robots, most of the methods and systems for feeding the ingredients involve inputting the ingredients contained in a cartridge into a cooking pot through a feeding mechanism, under the control of a control system. For example, CN patent 200610033780.5 entitled “Automatic Feeding Apparatus in a Cooking Device” discloses inputting the ingredients prepared in a cartridge according to a predetermined program into a cooking device/system, the feeding device comprising a frame body and a film clamper; wherein the film clamper consists of two film clamping bodies and moves within the frame body and, the two film clamping bodies bond with each other by their relative movement and then clamp the packaging film of the cartridge. The cartridge and the film clamper generate a relative movement to open the packaging film of the cartridge. However, since the cartridge has a length and a width, and the packaging film are generally sealed around the cartridge, and thus using the relative movement produced between the film clamper and the cartridge to open the cartridge may result in incomplete or unreliable opening of the packaging film. In addition, the production costs of the cartridge and packaging film is actually quite high.
Similarly, CN utility model 200820123775.8 provides “A Feeding Apparatus for Automatic Cooking System,” which comprises a plurality of cartridges, a moving means for accommodating and moving the cartridges. The moving means is disposed at one side of a cooking pot; a turning mechanism is arranged at the centerline at the same side of the pot, and the turning mechanism clamps the cartridge and turns it over, so that ingredients inside the cartridge are poured into the center of the pot. Compared with the prior art, the ingredient cartridge of the feeding device does not requires packaging the cartridge containing cooking ingredients with a plastic film, and also eliminates the complicated mechanism for tearing the film. However, it is also disadvantageous in that the ingredient cartridge is not sealed and thus places certain requirements on the cooking environment, and does not facilitate the preservation, the automatic processing, the packaging and transportation of the ingredients prior to the actual cooking.
The prior art also provides an automatic cooking machine. The machine seals the cooking ingredients in ingredient bags, and then the different ingredients are put into different ingredient bags according to the order of adding the ingredients in the cooking process and the two ends of the ingredient bags are each connected to two conveyor belts along the longitudinal direction of the ingredient bags, i.e. the ingredient bags are placed horizontally and clamped between the two conveyor belts, similar to the structure of a bullet belt. A cutting tool is arranged over the pot and between the two conveyor belts. When in an operation mode, the clamped ingredient bags are conveyed by a conveying means until the ingredient bags are over the pot, and when the ingredient bags are over the pot, they are cut open by a cutting tool, so that ingredients inside the ingredient bags fall into the pot. However, this machine is disadvantageous in that:
(1) The complex structure of the entire cooking system is inclined to result in the mutual interferences of different mechanisms.
(2) Since the pot is a component that requires frequent cleaning, arranging two conveyor belts and a cutting tool over the pot makes its cleaning troublesome.
(3) It is also quite complicated and troublesome to assemble and disassemble the ingredient bag clamped by the conveyor belts.
(4) During the entire process from the start of the feeding process to the completion of the feeding, the ingredient bag remains over the pot, and it is thus inclined to be affected by the continuous thermal radiation or smog generated when the pot is being heated, and the quality of the cooking is thus impaired. In addition, in case that the ingredient bag fails to pour the ingredients completely into the pot, it is possible that the ingredients intermittently leak into the pot and thus would also seriously impair the quality of the cooking.
(5) After being cut, the ingredient bag would have a movement similar to pendulum movement, and hence the ingredients in the ingredient bag are unable to fall into a desired area. The desired area refers to the appropriate position that the cooking ingredients should be located in the cooking pot according to the object point of the cooking utensils, the requirements of the cooking technique and the actual needs of the cook. The appropriate position is within the desired area, and it means that when the cooking ingredients are in this position, the ingredients can be heated and/or stirred in an effective, uniform and/or desirable manner. Usually the appropriate position locates within an inner area around the heated center of the cooking pot, or within an area covered by a heat-transfer medium (such as oil) and the like, and should be smaller than the entire inner area of the cooking pot. One example is the Chinese wok. When the heat source is located in the central portion of the wok, the area near the central portion (e.g. if with the central point of the wok as the center of a circle, it is an area that has a diameter of about 5-15 cm extending from the center of the circle, or a smaller area) is the appropriate position. Outside this area, the temperature of the wok decreases rapidly, and may thus become inappropriate position. The appropriate position can, of course, be the entire range of the cooking pot. For example when using a small wok or a special shaped wok, or when the wok needs to be turned-over in a wide angle (e.g., 180-degree turn, 360 degree turn of the wok etc.), or when the entire wok is evenly heated. The so-called inappropriate position is the place where the cooking ingredients are difficult to or even can not be turned-over or stirred evenly and effectively by a turning-over means or a stirring means, the place where the cooking ingredients are difficult to or even can not go back to the appropriate position, the place where the cooking ingredients are difficult to or even can not be gathered to the desired area in the cooking pot, the place where the cooking ingredients are difficult to or even can not be heated evenly and effectively, and/or the place where it is not advantageous to a cooking process. For example, such an inappropriate position could be a blind area where a turning-over means or a stirring means can not reach, an area where a good turning-over effect can not be obtained although a turning-over means or a stirring means can reach there, an area which is beyond the turning-over/stirring range or even out of the cooking pot, or an area where the control system of a cooking utensil or a cooking machine is difficult to or can not detect the existence of the cooking ingredients although it is in the area where it could be turned-over or stirred but it fails to be turned-over or stirred. When the appropriate position extends to the whole inner area of the cooking pot then the inappropriate position is the area which is out of the cooking pot. The quality of dish can be impaired seriously under the foresaid circumstances, and it may even lead to the failure of the cooking.
(6) The area over the pot is an important area for conducting various operations. If the feeding means is disposed over the pot, it will reduce the operation space of other means, e.g. a mixing means. In addition, if disposed over the pot, the feeding means would easily be grimed by the fume and damaged by the heat. If the feeding means grimed, it would be difficult to clean the grime and the grime may drop into the pot and contaminate the dish.
CN patent application entitled “Cooking Ingredient Packaging and a Method for Feeding the Ingredient Using the Packaging” (Application No.: 200410052197.x) also discloses a feeding method of ingredient packages, comprising separately placing each package in the periphery of a rotatable package fixing means, and when the rotatable package fixing means comes to the feeding position over the pot, the motor actuates the fixing means to rotate, so that the first package is below the fixing means and one end of the package is cut open by a opening means, and ingredients inside fall into the pot by gravity through the opening of the package. However, the above arrangement has the following drawbacks: Firstly, only by gravity, the ingredients are hardly emptied out. Furthermore, this rotational feeding manner requires a complicated structure, and it is difficult to manufacture, assemble, clean the multiple parts of the structure and it is difficult to fix the package. Secondly, because its opening means is provided at the lower end of the package fixing means, the ingredients in the package may easily spill onto the opening means and stain the opening means. In addition, the package fixing means shall be desirably arranged at the position very close to the cooking pot, otherwise the ingredients would splash about. Thirdly, since the desired position on which the ingredients should fall is somewhere near the center of the pot covered with oil, if the ingredients fall onto somewhere without oil or with very little oil, such as on the periphery of the pot, those ingredients would stick to the pot, and they would be out of the reach of the stirring means. Furthermore, with this arrangement, the surrounding area of the pot is very crowded and it would not be easy to clean these components.